Good afternoon, squiders!
As you know, the winter critique marathon is going on right now at one of my online writing communities. Week 5 just started so we’ve done four weeks and I’ve had five chapters critiqued in that time frame.
So, Friday, I said to myself, okay, time to go back through said five chapters, make changes, and send chapters 15 and 16 (the third and fourth chapters through the marathon respectively) to my in-person critique group.
Friday, however, I had to run a ton of errands and was generally very productive, but the editing didn’t get done. Saturday my computer went on the fritz, so no editing got done. Sunday was Scouts all morning and a play in the afternoon (Misery, based off the Stephen King novel), so, you guessed it, the editing did not get done.
By the time Monday morning came around, I was a mess, mad at myself for not doing the work earlier and thoroughly overwhelmed by the amount I now needed to do in a single day (revisions on five chapters, a readthrough of a sixth to post for this week), and so, do you know what I did?
I spent three hours watching YouTube and eating chocolate.
I did eventually get going and am most of the way through the third chapter (just need to finish up the last person’s comments), but I definitely spiraled there for a bit. Which is stupid, because it just makes things worse, but I got so overwhelmed I couldn’t function.
So, clearly, the answer here is to NOT wait and do a whole month’s updates at once, which made me think about how I was doing the summer marathon. And it took me a minute to remember, because I have the brain of a goldfish.
So, once upon a time (probably the beginning of 2023, but maybe in 2022) I printed out the first half or so of the book with beta comments included from when I first finished that draft (so, like, 2017) and had had people read it. So I was doing my paper edits on that, editing, and then posting that chapter in the marathon. And then I wasn’t doing anything with that during the marathon, just making sure I could get the next chapter done in time to post.
And then after the marathon I was re-printing out the chapters, color-coding all the marathon people’s comments on that, and doing edits from there (so everyone’s stuff was in one spot and I could see if there were specific spots that were throwing people).
But the marathon ended and I kept going. I reached the end of my earlier printed out stuff and have, since then, been printing out chapters as I needed them and doing the paper edits. I was about five chapters ahead and am now two, because I do need to critique other people’s stuff and that takes time and brain power.
(I just now realized my in-person critique group is a week later than I thought, so I have freaked out for literally nothing. Oh my god.)
I’ve done these edits on the computer, putting my document and the critiquer’s document side by side, but now I’m wondering if I should do the double paper edit like I was over the summer. Except that seems like a waste of paper. I don’t know.
Long story short–spread out projects, and pay attention to when your critique meetings actually are.
See you later in the week, squiders!
